RIXC Art Science Festival

Center for New Media Culture, Riga, Latvia
Curator: Raitis SMITS / RIXC
Artists: Marc LEE (Switzerland), Jacques PERCONTE (France), Juuke SCHOORL (the Netherlands), Brenna MURPHY (USA), Hans BREDER (USA), Clement VALLA (USA), Matteo ZAMAGNI (United Kingdom), Zane ZELMENE (Latvia), The Swan Collective (Felix KRAUS) (Germany), Annie BERMAN (USA), Felipe CUCKER and Hector RODRIGUEZ (Hong Kong), Gunta DOMBROVSKA (Latvia), Martin John CALLANAN (United Kingdom/Ireland), Nina FISCHER and Maroan EL SANI (Germany), Santa FRANCE (Latvia), Greta HAUER (United Kingdom), Martin HESSELMEIER and Andreas MUXEL (Germany), Raphael KIM (United Kingdom), Michal KINDERNAY (Czech Republic), Christopher MANZIONE and Seth CLUETT (USA), Andrew MCWILLIAMS (USA), Melodie MOUSSET and Naem BARON (Switzerland/France), Hanns Holger RUTZ (Austria), Julia SOKOLNICKA (Poland/the Netherlands), Danielle ZORBAS (Australia)
19.10.2017 - 26.11.2017
http://festival2017.rixc.org/


10.000 Moving Cities - VR - RIXC Art Science Festival

10.000 Moving Cities - VR @ RIXC Art Science Festival

VIRTUALITIES AND REALITIES is the theme of this year’s RIXC Art Science festival and the 2nd Open Fields conference taking place in Riga, Latvia, aiming to establish a space for artistic interventions and conversations about the complex implications of immersive technologies.

This year’s festival programme features Public Keynotes, the 2nd Open Fields Conference sessions, AR/VR Showcases, Exhibitions and Performances. RIXC Festival is internationally renowned gathering for artists and scholars working at the intersection of arts, digital humanities and science.

The main festival events will take place from October 19–21, 2017, in some of Riga’s most visible art venues – the Conference will take place in the Art Academy of Latvia, and the Latvian National Museum of Art, while the exhibitions – in kim? Contemporary Art Centre and RIXC Gallery spaces.

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

* Monika FLEISCHMANN (DE) & Wolfgang STRAUSS / research artists & scientists, DE
* Ellen PEARLMAN / Parsons / New School / Art-A-Hack / ThoughtWorks / New York, USA
* Chris SALTER / Concordia University, CA
* David ROTHENBERG / New Jersey Institute of Technology / USA

VIRTUALITIES AND REALITIES

Immersive technologies coupled with superior virtual environments, artificial intelligence algorithms, faster processors, and biometrics are launching a new era in virtual experiences, entertainment and story-telling. At the same time these technologies have the potential for reinforcing stereotypes, contributing to massive economic and social disruptions, and implementing new systems of invasive monitoring and control.

What do these new developments in VR/AR mean for education, entertainment, social policy, and systems of codified knowledge? Like their predecessors the telephone, television, and mobile phone, what are the impending new vistas and reduced horizons?

Biometrics and the uploading and tracking of personal data spans areas from healthcare to advertising, with implications for law, criminal justice, entertainment (gaming), education and sports. Machine learning and algorithms are harvesting and making use of big data in new and startling ways. Some of it allows pinpoint accuracy in determining issues of public health, economics, climate change, story-telling, political leanings and the migration of populations. What does all this data combined with new technologies mean? What are some current and future artistic strategies that deal with this? Combined with the acceleration of VR/AR and technologies of immersion, how will societies react?

Taking place in the framework of RISK CHANGE EU Creative Europe’s project, various festival events will explore relations between “virtualities” and “realities” in our post-media society. The Open Fields conference will discuss the socio-cultural and neurobiological impacts of virtual and augmented reality, and other immersive technologies. The conference participants will also look at the places and movements from a socio-political perspective, the mapping and charting of migrating cultures particularly people and their data traces.

The conference will be complemented by the festival exhibition that will explore the changing role of art in society, its transformative potential, and its relations to the sciences, especially focusing on neomateriality, new aesthetics and other critical qualities of the post-digital.


Exhibited Artwork


10.000 Moving Cities - Same but Different, VR (Virtual Reality)

Interactive Net- and Telepresence-Based Installation

10.000 Moving Cities - Same but Different deals with urbanization and globalization in the digital age. The user moves through visual worlds posted publicly by others on social networks such as YouTube, Flickr or Twitter. Here these personal impressions are streamed in real time like windows to our changing world. The viewer participates in the social movements of our time and makes a virtual journey more …


Publication

Woman dressed in black wearing a VR data Google

Virtualities and Realities. New Experiences, Art and Ecologies in Immersive Environments

RIXC, LiepU MPLab
Book, color, 480 pages, 24 x 17 cm
2019
English
Rasa Smite and Raitis Smits
ISBN 9934843471, 978-9934843471
rixc.org

Immersive technologies, coupled with superior virtual environments, artificial intelligence algorithms, faster processors, and biometrics, are launching a new era in virtual experiences,entertainment and interactive storytelling. At the same time these technologies have the potential for invasive monitoring and control.
What are the present and future artistic strategies that deal with this? Combined with the acceleration of VR/AR and technologies of immersion, how will societies react?
more …